Posts Tagged shad

After fishing for the first time all year on Saturday I couldn’t wait to get back on the water. Well I didn’t have to wait too long. Sunday afternoon my friend Mike and I went out to Lake Arthur from 12:30 to 4:30 in the afternoon. Going into the day I had it in my mind set that I was going to fish a couple coves toward the 528 end of the lake. Being addicted to bass fishing is great, but I knew the muskie and northern pike get active in Shannon’s Cove in the early spring and can be a blast to catch. Since we only had 4 hours to fish we end up spending most of our time there. I managed to get a couple short bass on Lipless Crankbaits and another on a suspending jerkbait. If it wasn’t for the KBBC tournament coming up I would share in greater deal how and what exact lures I was catching them on. I am sure everyone understands the value of that information. The water temperature and water color with-in that cove alone was very different. If you were over 4 feet deep the water was pretty clear. You could see 3 to 4 feet of depth. If you got into the 2 foot of water or less you lost all but 6 inches of visibility. The surface temperature ranged from 48 to 58 degrees depending on the side of the cove, depth of the water and cover you were by. I have never seen that big of a difference in one cove before. Then again I am not sure I have ever fished in the middle of March in 70 degree weather in Western Pennsylvania.

I have always tried to throw lipless crankbaits in the spring and failed for the most part. I always thought I was using the wrong one, had the wrong color, or just didn’t know how to retrieve them. The truth is that it is a little of all of those categories. Over the next couple of weeks I plan on doing a lot of experimentation with them because of the moderate success that I had this weekend. If anyone has any input or advice they would like to share lets use the message board. See my post on the message board for what I learned this weekend.